Indigenous Artists Had Been Waiting Decades for a Place Like Daphne

The artist-run centre daphne was founded in 2018 as an online artists' collective that continued into the pandemic. Four Anishnaabe and Kanienkhá:ka artists, Hannah Claus, Nadia Myre, Caroline Monnet and Skawennati, met virtually weekly for beading nights and work on other projects. Together, they had a dream: create the first artist-run centre for Indigenous artistic creativity.

“This was something the Indigenous arts and community wanted since the mid ‘90s,” says Skawennati, an artist who specializes in Indigenous futurism. “At that time, there was nowhere to show our work, and the public’s interest in Indigenous art was just starting. Now, it’s on another level.”

Before daphne’s establishment, Skawennati aligned with artists Ryan Rice and Eric Robertson, who co-founded Nation to Nation in 1994, an artist collective that did pop-up events around Montreal. “They were very guerrilla in different people's spaces, in office lofts. Eventually we rented a space in Old Montreal and partnered with other organizations. It was really our only way to carve out a space for Indigenous art people could see.”

In its own account of its origins, daphne acknowledges that Indigenous artists were gaining access to exhibitions and board positions at existing artist-run centres. What remained missing was a space shaped by Indigenous artists’ own values; a place where presenting work, discussing issues and sustaining relationships could happen together.

In Montreal, daphne’s founders wanted to help determine the conditions in which Indigenous art was made public.

The threads connecting us

In 2019, daphne became a legal organization and artist-run centre. A year later, it started renting out a gallery space to host Indigenous arts exhibitions. The co-founders wanted a name, specifically a woman’s name, to represent the spirit of the space. “Choosing a name was difficult for us, but when Caroline said ‘daphne,’ it was all like, ‘yes,’ Daphne is a woman's name,” says Skawennati. “And it made it feel like Daphne was a person.”

The name daphne also pays homage to the matriarch of Indigenous art, Daphne Odjig. “She started an artist-run centre [the Odjig Indian Prints of Canada] in Winnipeg back in the day [in 1973],” says Skawennati. “So the name is in memory and homage to that work.”

But the actual space at daphne goes beyond the art on the walls, acting as a connective thread rooted in community and artistic collaboration.

“It was very important to us that Daphne be a welcoming space where people can be able to take it all in,” Skawennati says. “So whenever we have an opening, there are couches, and we can sit there, look at art and think about being Indigenous artists all together and our relation with the world.”